


The Arc of Ascension, Fragment e9,1: Restitution

by bzarcher, solarbird



Series: Of Gods and Monsters [36]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Acceptance, Apologies, Autistic Satya "Symmetra" Vaswani, Background Relationships, Beginnings, Canon Autistic Character, F/F, Favela, Healing, Injury Recovery, Other, Past Violence, Peacemaking, Penance - Freeform, Recovery, Restitution, Talon Angela "Mercy" Ziegler, Talon Satya "Symmetra" Vaswani, Trans Female Character, Trans Sombra (Overwatch), Trust, Vishkar Corporation, patents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-29 16:20:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15077024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bzarcher/pseuds/bzarcher, https://archiveofourown.org/users/solarbird/pseuds/solarbird
Summary: The new gods have risen, ready, at last, to grapple with a world of heroes. Moira O'Deorain herself has been reborn, now made one of the creations her previous self meant to rule, and she works with her wife - the goddess Mercy - and their ensemble of new deities to remake the world, toimproveit... for everyone.With absolute control of the Vishkar Corporation, Satya Vaswani takes stock, and finds that perhaps there is more to be done than she had previously considered.Of Gods and Monsters: The Arc of Ascensionis a continuance ofOf Gods and Monsters: The Arc of Creation, a side-step sequel toThe Armourer and the Living Weapon. It will be told in a series of eddas, sagas, interludes, fragments, texts, and cantos, all of which serve their individual purposes. To follow it as it appears,please subscribe to the series.





	The Arc of Ascension, Fragment e9,1: Restitution

_[Early May, 2078]_

Satya Vaswani sat on the rooftop, by the fountain, hands together, fingers intertwined, not meditating, but instead, lost deeply in thought, in time, in the time _before_ , before she'd taken control of Vishkar, before she'd been Changed, before she'd agreed to join what had been Talon, before she'd... almost... been part of Overwatch, before, before, before...

...where really, for her, it all began, in Rio de Janeiro, with Sanjay, and Calado, and an explosion, and a little girl, whose name she never even knew.

_Moira, I think, is not the only one owing penance for past mistakes_.

The investigation into the Eastern European operations had proven somewhat messy. Standards in some branches of the company had been lax, or simply ignored, and several officers found themselves with their walking papers, up on charges, in a few cases, adjusted, or, in a very few cases, removed rather permanently.

Sometimes knowing a few Weapons made things easier, and if a few people needed to be... cured of their afflictions... along the way, well, that's the gods' prerogative, is it not?

But there must, always, be balance. Symmetry. Alignment. Even justice, if any of it is to mean anything, and... a few scales, in particular, have been far too askew for far too long, and it was time to balance them, or, at least start.

She opened her eyes, stood, and walked across the rooftop garden, to her office atop the building. “Durga?" she said, entering.

"Ma'am?" asked her most trusted personal assistant.

"Prepare the papers we discussed - and... I am going to render an image of a child who lived near our Rio de Janeiro development, as of a few years ago, along with what few details I have. We are going to find her."

"Yes, ma'am."

At her own desk, she pulled up a schedule, picked a date, and smiled. _It will be a start, at least._

\-----

The _Lúcio: Too Much Heaven_ tour kept atypically, even bizarrely, high security around its schedule, almost the sort of nonsense - even some of the employees thought it was all a bit daft - used by dictators, with false triple-bookings and multiple transports on multiple routes.

But they still had to sell tickets, and they still had to hold shows, and those - well. How many places could they be? And if Lúcio couldn't resist the Helsinki underground dance party scene, and if he _would_ , one way or another, do a sneak show for certain fans who did not need to be told and all of their best friends after the official show at Club Kaiku, and that they would just _find_ him, knowing him as well as they did, well.

It didn't take the world's greatest hacker to track _that_ down. Though Satya would admit she did help considerably.

"So," he said, glaring at the goddess sitting on one of her hardlight chairs, in front of him, in his the washroom that served as a dressing room, away from the warehouse's dance floor. "Are you here to make more threats, or is it just _my turn?_ "

Satya, blinked, slowly. "I do not understand. I... " She gasped, a little, thinking, _of course_. "No, Lúcio. I am sorry if my method of tracking you down implied such a thing. We no longer do that." She stood, and stretched a little, for the sheer pleasure of it. "No, I... I am here to apologise."

"For going back, you mean? For..."

"For many things. For Rio. For the Favela. I did not know, but I _should_ have, and I was negligent, and many people were hurt needlessly, as a result. I know this does not make it up, but... I wished to do that."

"...huh," he said, unimpressed. "You could've put that in a letter."

"I have," she answered. "But that apology is public, and is from Vishkar, officially."

"What?" The star musician blinked, genuinely surprised. "You... Vishkar is..."

"Apologising, and admitting fault, as an act of the corporation." She handed him an envelope. "This contains a written copy of the announcement, and it is signed by me, as CEO and majority voting shareholder."

He opened the envelope, and stared at the paper, written in Portuguese, Hindi, and English, with Satya's signature in actual ink at the bottom. A full admission. A _confession_ , of what happened in Rio de Janeiro. A document he never hoped, never _imagined_ to see, outside of a courtroom, dragged out of them by force of law.

"I'm gonna take this to the press, you know that, right? I'm gonna throw this across every news agency that'll cover it."

"We have already sent copies, earlier today. I'm sure you will want to make some sort of statement yourself, but it is already known."

The musician pulled out his phone, and searched news and financials sites, and found coverage, immediately. _Murdered Vishkar Executive Behind Explosions In Rio_. _Vaswani Cleans House: Vishkar Admits Liability, Offers Compensation_ , _Vishkar Acknowledges Fault in Rio Favela Explosion, Fires_.

He looked back up, astounded. "Satya, I..."

"There is a second matter to be settled, as well. A matter of certain patents, for certain technologies, created by your father." She swallowed. "We wish to transfer them _formally_ to you. We had legal claim to them, but we have determined that claim, while legally defensible, is dubious, and..."

"I already have my dad's tech," he said, proudly. "I _took_ it back from you. Myself."

"Of course. And threats regarding that will stop - _have_ been ordered stopped, already. With the transferral of patents, our corporate basis for action will disappear."

She put her small briefcase carefully atop the counter, next to the sink, disliking touching ... well, anything, in this room, if she was to be honest with herself. Opening it, she pulled out a set of papers, and handed them to Lúcio.

"I'm not signing _anything_ ," he said, immediately.

"Nor should you, without council. We would simply transfer ownership directly to you, but the law in this case requires your acceptance, and copies of these pages have been sent to your legal team for them to analyse. They will find that there are no conditions attached; it is a simple transfer of ownership. If you agree, the patents will be transferred. It is as simple as that."

He skimmed the small number of pages while she spoke, and looked up at her, at her platinum eyes, dismayed. "Why... why are you doing this? For PR? For absolution? For... thanks? You're not getting it."

She shook her head, no. "I have my own reasons. I will simply say that I have come to realise..." She closed the briefcase, and looked down at it, knowing what came next. "...Moira is not the only one who has apologies to make."

"So it's true. You're not under her control anymore."

Her gaze darted up to, almost through him, a smooth motion he found a touch disturbing. "We never were. Well," she corrected herself, "I suppose Danielle was, early on - before she was fully herself. But only her, and only then."

He frowned. "Not even Lena?" he challenged. "Not even _Fareeha?_ "

“Their ascensions were handled... inappropriately, and, as I said, we no longer do that. But even then, they were not her puppets, and recently, they were shown the truth - all of it, just as Moira was, if not in exactly the same way - and decided they wished to remain, for the same reasons I joined, and more. To have a family. To help make a better world.”

She picked the briefcase up off the counter, and pulled a small activator out of her jacket pocket.

"Thank you for your time, Lúcio. I hope at some point we can meet again, under friendlier circumstances."

"Yeah," he said, nodding, slowly. "If this is real... if this is a real change... if it's _really_ real... then... maybe I hope that, too."

She smiled at him, for the first time in a very long time, and dipped her head, briefly, in a hint of a bow, before she activated the translocator in her hand, and vanished.

\-----

_[All dialogue between Satya and Sombra is translated from the Spanish. All other dialogue is translated from the Portuguese.]_

A funny thing, those oh-so-popular sunglasses.

They could be set to detone. To deintensify. To make a riot of colour just that much more manageable. Sometimes, Satya felt particularly grateful for that.

She walked with Sombra through the narrow streets of the Favela, trying to see the patterns in it, trying to see the _order_ in it, order which, she knew, had to be there, and that she would someday have to understand.

_We could run proper sewer lines in a week_ , she thought. _If I could just... understand it, and convince them I did._

It wasn't that different to the slums of Hyderabad, where she had been born, but... she had to admit... stronger. More money, many places. It surprised her - before, she'd assumed it was just the same, but... it isn't. And past that, still, a different measure, a different beat, a different rhythm...

Sometimes, she wished she had Lúcio to help her understand such things better.

"My face-matching software saw her over there, most often," Olivia said, quietly, in Spanish, rather than Portuguese. She pointed over to a small market square. A barber, a fishmonger, a green grocer, a chemist, a dentist, a cafe, a few closed storefronts - including one they had rented, in advance - and a few offices. "Phone cameras, mostly. She comes here to shop."

_It is fortunate they build out of concrete and stone_ , she thought. _Otherwise, the fire risk would be even less manageable._ She shuddered at the thought. _We could do so much better, if only..._

The two women walked into the storefront they had rented, unlocking the front gate, raising it, opening the front door, and finding it as the estate agent had described. "It is good that we need this room only as a transit point," Satya said. "It is far too small for a treatment facility."

"Hey," Sombra said, pointing towards the cafe. "Let's get something to drink, sit outdoors a bit. Just... keep an eye out, you know?"

Satya nodded, letting her lover take the lead, focusing on those things she _could_ do, and waited.

They did not see her that day, so they came back the next, and did not see her again, and they came back a third day, and did not see her, yet again.

_It's... like grain,_ she thought, sitting in the plaza, on the fourth day, working, a bit, by remote. _Each building a seed. A kernel. Or barnacles, tightly clustered, on a beach. Each its own colour, and... and... from a distance... it **does** form a kind of order, does it not? An organic order, like nodules of bark on those tall American trees, like honeycomb cells, but square, like..._

She took off her sunglasses, and looked around, watching the pattern of pedestrian flow, how everyone knew how to move around, so that the neighbourhood, so crowded, so thick with buildings and people, still...

...breathed.

"It _is_ you, isn't it."

A teenage girl spoke in Portuguese, beside her, and as she turned to face the speaker, she saw the slap coming, and did not block it. The impact rang, even in the noise of the square.

_Sometimes_ , Sayta thought, _it is good to feel some pain_.

"I _remember_ you," the girl snapped. "On that stage, at that ceremony. We drove you out, after that. All of you. What do you think you're doing back here?"

The burn damage to the girl's face had been repaired - not perfectly, but well, and better than she would've expected, from what she saw while standing on that stage, those years ago. The scarring she remembered was gone... but not everything had been healed.

"Looking for you," Satya said, quietly, rubbing at her cheek, as Sombra discreetly scanned the square, checking for anyone else, translocator ready.

"Why?"

"To apologise. And to make restitution, as far as I can."

"I don't want your apology. I want you to leave. I want you to stay out."

"We could heal your remaining injuries. All of them. Whatever effects are left from your burns, and anything anyone else has suffered."

"We have doctors, and hospitals - health care is a _right_. We don't need you."

"Of course it is. But you do not have Angela Ziegler."

She snorted. "Can she replace crushed spines and missing limbs?"

"Yes."

"...what?"

" _Yes_. As if nothing had never happened."

The girl looked dubious, and pointed at the architech's prosthetic. "Then why do _you_ still have _that?_ "

"Because I choose to. Because it is a tool, and useful for my work, and it is my own design. But I do not _have_ to have a prosthetic - and neither should any of those hurt by Sanjay's... by _our_ actions."

"What makes you think I need anything from you, or your _doctor?_ Do you see scars? Do you see burns?" she demanded, pointing at her face. "Do you?"

"No," she said, gently. "But I do see the restricted motion. I do see the partial paralysis. It is nerve damage, is it not?"

Rosa - the girl, from so long ago, her name, finally remembered - blinked in surprise, her left eye just a bit slower than her right. "No one notices that. How did..."

"Sombra," she said, turning to her lover. "Have you..."

"Already done, _princessa_. She's waiting."

She pulled up an article from _O Globo_ on her padd, showing her company's acknowledgement of responsibility, and handed it to the teenager.

"We want to find everyone we hurt. We know your hospitals did their best, and did well. But we can do so much more - starting with you."

"Angela..." the girl whispered, registering the name again. "...Zie... Overwatch? Oasis?" She looked back at the Vishkar CEO. " _That_ Angela Ziegler?"

"Yes," a voice called, from doorway of the closed storefront they had rented. "This Angela Ziegler." She pulled the door shut behind her, and the crowd parted, reflexively, as she glided over to the teenager, who just stared at the woman with the wings.

"And what is your name, dear?"

"Rosa," she said, quietly, surprised, still transfixed by the woman who looked a little too much like an angel to be real.

"I would like to treat the remaining damage from your injuries," the angel said, passers by slowing, to watch, confused, but attracted. "I need permission from you - do I have it? And may I look at the nerve damage? I would need to touch your face."

"...yes?" she said, hesitantly, but it was enough.

"Thank you," Angela said, with a reassuring smile.

"You're... actually her," she said, confused, as she felt her skin warm under the doctor's touch. "Oh, that feels..."

"Your current doctors did excellent work, given conventional technologies," she said, quietly. "You should tell them I said so, if I do not meet them." She felt gently around Rosa's skin, along the face, and neck. "You have a combination of numbness and neuropathic pain, don't you? Terrible. The worst of both worlds. You're very brave, to put up such a front for it."

Then, a series of feather-like touches around the eye. "The damage to the optic nerve is mild, but surprising, and ... they should've done a vitrectomy, really, but there must have been a reason they chose not to... Ah. Yes. I see. But I can heal it without risk."

She nodded, keeping her hand on Rosa's cheek. "I understand your condition, now. Close your eyes for just a moment, would you?"

The teenager did so, and saw a golden glow even through her closed eyelids. She felt her face and neck and shoulder warm, and her skin relax, the slight sense of _pulling_ at the hidden scars suddenly gone, all at once, and the pain, usually mild, but always present, vanished like ice in summer sun, and she gasped, and opened her eyes, and everything, for the first time since the explosion, was oh so very clear, and bright.

" _What did you do?!_ " she cried, feeling her face, so aware of it, the lingering numbness vanished with the pain. She closed her right eye, looking around at everything with her left, clear, bright, and sharp.

"Nanosurgeon-driven nerve and tissue regeneration, mostly in the reticular dermis, but through several layers of the skin," the angel said, serenely. "Along with a bit of stabilisation to your posterior vascular membrane. That's what had triggered the incipient lattacing in your retina, and created all those, ah, floaters. Your doctors could have addressed that, but not without risking lens crystalisation, and I do not have that limitation." She smiled. "Doing it this way is expensive - well, to Vishkar, anyway - but simple enough. How do you feel, dear?"

"My face doesn't hurt," she said, confused, as the small crowd murmured. "My neck, either. At all." She touched at her left cheek with her left hand, surprised at how much she felt, and alternated cheeks, comparing.

"I would hope not," the doctor replied. "How is your vision in your left eye?"

"I don't, I don't, I, it's, it's" - she looked around, at objects close, and distance. "Nothing's... it's all so sharp!"

"Good. We should visit your opthamologist, if we can."

"They, they, they had to do skin grafts," she whispered, feeling her face, and neck. "It took _weeks_ to heal. You...? How...?"

"More to the point..." the doctor continued, "I read the reports from the time, including the lists of those hurt in the explosion, and fire. I built a list of the victims. Most, I'm sure, have recovered well - but some could not have been healed, completely, with standard medical practice. My people have been talking to some of the local hospitals, but the patients - some are harder to locate than others. Will you help us find them?"

Rosa pulled back the collar of her blouse, feeling for the soft, buried scars that had formed where the doctors had worked, and knew that the effects of the... angel's... healing touch went all the way down. Gone. All of it. The hidden scars she'd got used to ignoring. The hidden scars she'd thought she'd just have to live with. Gone. Like the pain. Like the aches. Like the numbness. Gone. For good.

"...yes," she said, looking back up, free, for the first time in years, of pain, feeling light, feeling, feeling, feeling a little bit as of she'd been touched by God him... ...her... ...self. "I will."

**Author's Note:**

> This is the sixth instalment of _Of Gods and Monsters: The Arc of Ascension_. To follow this story, [subscribe to the series via this link](https://archiveofourown.org/series/972024), rather than to the individual works.


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